They came in their thousands to form an English corner of a foreign field for the climax, a day of days in the history of the England team and another one of abject misery for a once-proud Australian team fallen on hard times. Not even the snap showers washing in to interrupt play, and a flatness to the team on the field, could deny them a third overwhelming victory which came, by an innings and 83 runs, at 11.56, four minutes before the Shipping Forecast, and just as Billy the Barmy Trumpeter was playing a poignant Last Post for the demise of Australian cricket.

To Chris Tremlett went the honour, the debutant tailender Michael Beer chopping on to his stumps to spark the celebrations that would go on long into the night. But it took the second new ball to finish the job, as Steve Smith, who remained unbeaten on 54, and Peter Siddle, who had denied England when they had hoped to finish things on the fourth evening, took their eighth-wicket stand to 86 before Siddle (43) hit Graeme Swann precisely to Jimmy Anderson at deep midwicket.

Anderson then found the edge of Ben Hilfenhaus's bat for Matt Prior to take his 23rd catch, an England record for a five-match Ashes series. It took Anderson – the fellow too soft to bowl to Australians, remember, according to Justin Langer – to 24 wickets for the series, more than any England pace bowler in Australia since Frank Tyson terrorised them in 1954-55. Australia have now been beaten by an innings three times in the series, unprecedented for them.

It was set up on the fourth day by Anderson, not just Good but Brilliant Jimmy, indisputably the bowler of the series with daylight second. Anderson plunged the knife into what life was left in the twitching carcass of the Australian cricket team. The old ball reversed, as it always seems to do for England – the same England, said the sages here in the pre-series propaganda war, who would not know how to use a secondhand Kookaburra – and not for Australia.

But Anderson did not just use it, he had it talking, gabbling away, a ball with verbal diarrhoea. With it, he produced one of the best cameo spells of the series and knocked the heart out of the middle of the Australian innings: the left-hander Usman Khawaja, tyro and promising but given a strong lesson in this match that there is a giant step up to the top level, seduced outside off stump as the ball wafted away from him; the right-handed skipper Michael Clarke, destined perhaps to try to pick this side from the basement and not a great player in sight, put through the wringer, utter torture, before he found no answer to an away-swinger and mercifully also edged to Prior.

This was an Australian side in distress. The first innings in Brisbane and the third Test in Perth were their peaks in a series of otherwise total England domination. The stuffing had long been knocked out of them by the England batsmen, but there was a sorry capitulation where fight was needed. Shane Watson flamed briefly but ran himself out for once rather than his partner and Tim Bresnan took advantage of Phil Hughes's laboured endeavours to become an opening batsman of substance by sliding one across him and watching as the bat nibbled out like a fish taking the bait. It was all too easy.

Throughout the bulk of the series, Australia have been offered little respite by the England attack. Wave of attack had followed wave. Key to this has been the reverse and England are masters at it, their ability to get a ball into a condition to go after no more than 20 overs a skill that in part involves bowling it with a cross seam so that it first scuffs on the surface (such a delivery accounted for Hughes) and is then polished on one side only. But then comes the further skill in using it, for anyone might have a lock pick but not everyone can pick a lock.

Each of the three seamers is a practitioner and each benefited. When Anderson gave way to Bresnan after his mesmeric spell, the Yorkshireman responded by getting Mike Hussey caught in the gully, just as Hussey had opened the series by catching Andrew Strauss there with the third ball. And when, at the Randwick end, Graeme Swann conceded the crease to Chris Tremlett, the giant thundered in to rip out Brad Haddin and Mitchell Johnson with successive deliveries, a brutal bouncer followed by a wicked inswinger. When he had the bit between his teeth and the crowd roaring behind him, he looked a very serious proposition.

The thing that truly disheartened Australia though, that from which there was no response, was another monumental innings from England. In the second innings at Brisbane they made 517 for one to give notice of their potential; in Adelaide it was 620 for five; and Melbourne 513. Killer innings all. But here they made 644 before the final wicket fell by which time Australia had taken a third new ball and sent down almost 178 overs.

To place it in context, it is the seventh highest total England have ever made and their highest in Australia. It meant that England's runs per wicket for the series stood at 51.14. There were more records, for surely this has been a record series for records. The century that Prior scored, the fourth and most robust of his Test career, came from 109 balls, the fastest for England since Ian Botham's flogathon at Old Trafford in 1981, with nine fours, a six and a lot of scampering. Having added 107 for the seventh wicket with Ian Bell, Prior then helped Bresnan put on 102 for the eighth, before Swann added insult to Johnson's bowling injury. No side in the history of Test cricket have managed century stands for sixth, seventh and eighth wickets in the same innings.